Donate whatever you can or Join the 14,000 other NAWCC members for only $80 (plus $10 for hard copy publications). Check it out here.

This site is optimized for Interactive Use by Logged In Users.You can only post questions if you are Registered and Logged In.

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Notice: This is an old thread. The last post was 1933 days ago. If your post is not directly related to this discussion please consider making a new thread.

Don't want to use the carbon fibre tipped tweezers. The fibres do scratch. Delrin is good. Keep in mind any plastic-based tools needs to be kept clean of any dirt that could get embedded and scratch the item being handled.

Plastic tweezers are usually for handling watch batteries. That is what they are designed to do. Metal tweezers risk short circuiting batteries. You can avoid a lot of scratching and launching parts by getting and using finger cots and handling things with your fingers.

I use carbon fiber tweezers for all sorts of stuff, though almost exclusively for bigger stuff. I have the fiber-reinforced PVDF ones (black, solid plastic, run US$6-ish), both fine- and blunt-tipped. Don't use the fine-tipped ones much - I tried them for little parts, and they're just too springy. I use the blunt-tipped ones regularly to handle plates, bridges and cocks either to fish them out of the ultrasonic cleaner baskets (use them every time for that) or when I don't want to put finger cots on (just moving them, but not working on anything at the moment). I also use them to handle batteries and dials. I've never seen them come close to scratching anything, and I inspect every single piece of a watch under a 30x stereo microscope after cleaning. I'm a complete fanatic when it comes to "clean" and "don't scratch", and wouldn't use them if I didn't trust them completely. After all, they use them to handle silicon discs in chip fabrication, and those disc surfaces are a lot more easily scratched than brass. My main two tweezers are a pair of brass AM Peer-Vigors and a few pairs of stainless anti-magnetic Viola or Dumont #12s. I use the brass ones for danged near everything, but the ultra-fine-but-stout tips of the #12s are indispensable for the smallest screws.